AnnMarie Eldon

house

house calls and the slattern's self-disparaging emesis

a soul accouchement skin febriculae torque pre-intuitively
at first sight a trismus always slight tremouring as night
stars seen through dusk's unforeseen femerall
permitting a brief bad bad capnomancy then
the vagus nerve gone and breathing never the same
again but for years a love that shook cephalic
reasoning tore genetics foreswore silence kept
vision visual until visceral and could no more
who could ever know the river of the long tides
a crow grating his hoarseradish call across
the shore its protected piping plover blowing
back a shrill schoolyard whistle in sweet
disregard miles by thousands unbargained
for and all forfeited there was to be a conversion
a supination long before the costive tears
bludgeoning forth beneath the fourth station
twisting lives together gathering signs such
as wondered upon a wooden cross engraved
with a family name still there dried to greyed
ivory a settlers' graveyard brim full of marble
granite and pocked red sandstone with most
graves babies' some dead before they lived
still others dying in the order they were born
dates barely readable ghost years the cholera's
claim a universe trephined away from domestic
certainty a nyctalopia on both parts for parental
responsibility semen sluiced aeons spilt multi-
coloured dawns she thinks of herself as 'she' a
necrosis of what kept her hardened now brittle
how much she has loved him there is no possible
asnosmia within his lecturing mode his turning
her against herself every time seduction
a desquamation of resolve are only slovenly hills
slow easy-wide lanes a half-hour but nothing
against the megrim's advance relieved by her
whoring her mouth off each day checked off
produces a slight palpebral apathy feigned
days days relieved by the menarche when
she has already witched him and her faith
here always the familiar paresis a surdity
for children's needs a foetal curve which erases
no need ungual tracks upon the softest
unreceivables theirs the same shadow
sharing the same asthenia dangerous
miles to have come to numb a forced xerosis
an imperceptible lysis enough to fake normal
she pines she beals the present no sensational
novelties simply routine no one died of a broken
heart but always from premeditated error
or error or fatal intrusion bacterial some
immunological rationality how absurd
the allocheira shared or imaginary some
other woman makes him laugh now
in time she shall say I am wounded shamed
walls plastered a presentable pus slacken
their verticals these same same walls
from whereout there is no hope of travel or
release retchback I love you how I love you

place

...and of the unloveds

the crowd around the shrine those upon
the city's dung-heap a religious student
turned machine gunner the woman pimping
her nature in order to be held farmers
hit by the worst harvest in memory
collapsed in tears on the roadside
the vast majority of women seeking
abortions who died from excess implants
the popstar back on booze after 7 days
under a gagging order of millions
whose children the courts took left
with twenty quid after a quick fuck
alone and in fear of dying from snake
bite

...and their hiding place

and in any case what I do there
is none of your business you would
have to be steeped in it to know
but sweetheart I don't think you
remember what you say everything
will be alright you are loved yes
I must get back for prayers these
are weak people am I going to get
sentimental about his condition?
he's spent his whole life causing
conflict between 2 parents and he's
doing it to us now in any case it
has nothing to do with you or me what
you need is to hear another's heart
beating

drop 

how commitment is
one minute's jewel, another's
tear; things change, but sad

yet 

stumped 

Stumped

No few trees my forest tresses have lain
foundation, ill-neatly compass their trail
Unbridle pathways reign deep enbriared
versions of more formal

sheltered selves. Root snaps where
'praps it should heed canopial obligations
Boundaries branch and desist, turn
head, scabber weathered
hands furrowing for prayer

Rules left fallow go hybrid to seed
I scatter rust to feed children
Thus I'm marked wisdom, chained cook-pot
I cloth up spots of the world's water-
falling irreg
ularities, hack freedoms

from some indebted dead
wood. Focus upon each just-next silkstain
There may be nightshades of uncaring
I shake barbs. Take leave

(of) myself. Place     weight on
empty spaces. Strain           along borrowed boughs
Stake one step along ancient trusts. I know
not how unhefted needs grow
Earth cries a fossil tomorrow

Plains beckon

***'s Midnight Garden 

cracks 

Cracks

Cracks are good she said
in pain and hung her
head in vain and waiting

Help me with my cracks. They’re showing
far too much she said
and for such

boldness
learnt to feel ashamed and hung
her head again

There’s cures for cracks
I’ve heard she said
in superstores on the edges of towns. She waited

on an edge
forgetting where she was
and where she was supposed to be

No no no they said
All the packets of filler are in
the DIY

Oh so do I have to do it all myself
then? she asked as she
misheard

the directions
misread implications
made the mixture too dense

for anybody to get in
Except into a crack crept
a somebody who’d never minded

stiffness of mixture
Ooh smells good in
here to me he said

Cement, sticky fingers
make and mend, dough
I don’t know, - stuff

Anyway, cracks are
- good
he said in play
and went away

Yes, cracks are good she said
in pain and hung her
head in vain and waiting

And day after day
after day after day
learnt. Learnt

patience. Whenever he came
back there was another
crack, wider and deeper than the one

which came before it
Finally he said
Stuff it

Right she said
I'll help myself
instead

Hide she said
and dried

drip-trinity 

sonnet

apropositionally anhydrous
therefore no front line any more (than) a
flint axe or clumped-mass pubic hair betrussed

woman's ripe spraint blood less (than) all these qua
self-worth, the "one's position," C.V., role
No. Sand anonymous its opposite

celebrity, getting a life style, a goal
miled out – and – co-opted. Inapposite
voices those pierced heartpleas for liberty

vie and our endless walls block all account;
roll then through desert film footage vis-à-vis
K e e p i n g I n f o r m e d A b o u t I t but watch out

zombie hordes may unpaparazzi
anarchy                           neoreality

sonnet

float-glass perimeterneum reverberates
adsorbing heat but melding out of true
shadows splay trellis frames upon unplaced
trust or what if but if what hitherto

chest makes it... easier than paved these bad
dreams screed terrain      thin ice       (- the walking on,)
sparred liggers his sonorous breath churns, sharp brad
turns her to grab-lie make mere replicon

shame; token virtue then their tenderments
walls subsist along sound lines and ahs for ah's
sake yet to have fritt built thus lesser sense
treds dark across this housecard pack mirage

"vulnerable" how shush! booms like prayer from guilt
softly foundations reach, confess, resilt